Weekend Watchdog Wrap-Up

It is simply pathetic that ABC’s This Week failed to ask National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley about the latest bombshell report, from ABC no less, that senior Bush administration officials including V.P Dick Cheney and Hadley’s then-boss Condi Rice directly approved torture as an interrogation technique.

If Sunday show hosts don’t bother to explore the results of strong investigative reporting, that investigative reporting fades in the wind. For ABC, it’s a waste of their money to pay for investigative reporting, then not have their Sunday show even mention it. It’s not just bad for our democracy, it’s bad for their business.

Meanwhile, neither ABC and CBS’ Face The Nation (PDF file) asked Hadley or Defense Secretary Robert Gates about Bush’s plan to keep tour of duty in Iraq at 15 months throughout the rest of his presidency.

CBS asked Gates generally if he is “worried about the strain on the military troops,” and then let him claim the administration is going “back to 12-month deployments,” without noting that policy won’t go into effect until August 2009, long after Bush is gone.

And while Iran was touched upon by the shows, neither raised the question, “if the Iraqi government can have a diplomatic meeting with Iranian officials, why can’t the United States government?”

A mass refusal by the public to watch Donald Trump on TV will deprive him of big ratings, which he routinely uses to create a false impression of widespread popularity.

About Bill Scher

Bill Scher is the Online Campaign Manager at Campaign for America's Future, and the executive editor of LiberalOasis.com. He is the author of Wait! Don't Move To Canada!: A Stay-and-Fight Strategy to Win Back America, a regular contributor to Bloggingheads.tv and host of the LiberalOasis Radio Show weekly podcast. He has opinion articles that have been published by the New York Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune and Omaha World-Herald, and has made appearances on CNN, MSNBC and NPR among other TV and radio outlets.